Detroit teen robbed of coat, shoes while waiting for school bus

3:04 PM, February 27, 2013

By Megha Satyanarayana

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

The school bus was running late. The sun was barely out. The slight 13-year-old said a man walked up, said something about missing his bus, and then, as the teen inched away, the man pulled out a gun and said, “Give me everything you’ve got.”

A Detroit family is still looking for answers after their oldest son was robbed of his Adidas jacket, shoes and cell phone Monday while waiting for his morning school bus at 7 Mile Road and Eureka Street on the east side. The teenager told the Free Press Wednesday that he ran home in the below freezing air of Monday morning in his socks, screaming that he had been held up.

“When he pulled out the gun, my heart stopped for a minute,” said the teen Wednesday, enjoying a snow day with his uncle, friend and brother. “I was stuck. I had to do whatever he said.”

His mother, Ebony Whisenton, 30, said the incident floored her; a child robbed of his shoes at 6:30 a.m. on 7 Mile Road. He had been baptized the day before.

“I’m at a loss for words,” she said. “He’s a kid just trying to go to school. They sent him running home with no shoes on.”

Detroit Police said the matter is under investigation. The teen describes the thief as about 5’10”, bald with a longish beard.

In the meantime, the teenager, a Detroit Public Schools seventh grader, is being picked up in front of his house by the bus and his mother hopes that will continue for the foreseeable future. She said she knew the neighborhood wasn’t that great, but after 10 months of living there, this is the first trouble they’ve had. Whisenton said she is concerned enough to send him to the bus stop in tattered jeans and sneakers, just to make him less of a target.

“You know how the economy is,” she said. “Thank God. It could have been worse.”

Since the stick up, the teen has gotten new shoes. But he worries when his brother goes to school in the morning. He said he’s become upset at what the theft has done to his family.

“My mom works so hard to give me the things she got me,” he said. “Our community needs to change.”